Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Support Group
This community is a place where members can discuss current events and weigh in on what's going on in the world.
I almost wrote an email today to all of the people I care about saying I just can't take any more stress, pressure, pain, worry....but thank GOD I'm not suicidal just begging for help. So I'll start with all of you just to vent and get it out. Maybe since you don't know me, it will make me feel less guilty about burdening my loved ones.
The MS is first and foremost. And I don't even have a bad case of MS. I have difficulty walking. Have incredible pain once every 4-6 weeks that just doesn't resolve with anything I do. I have little or no energy. But that's it. No wheelchair. I'm still working. I feel guilty even obsessing about it because I know many of you have it so much worse.
But when I get into these bad periods I find it so hard to work. It hurts to type - look at me I'll write this post and complain later! It hurts to walk. I make so many mistakes and people are always being so f-ing agreeable, which somehow makes me feel worse. I was a good employee. Now my focus is bad.
I'm on a gazillion meds for all of it. I'm a walking pharmacy.
Financially my husband and I are in ruins. I know we - as is everybody - are one step away from being jobless. One step away from being evicted for not paying the rent (this Friday). His car broke down for the 2nd time in 2 weeks. Robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Oh, my gosh, I could go on and on. And the only thing that keeps running through my head is that I thought I was a good person, and can't understand what I've done. I feel like Karma has come back to bite me for somebody I wronged. For not going to church. For thinking mean thoughts. And here I am at work, and I can't stop crying. Anybody out there understand where I'm coming from? I feel so guilty for something I must have done, but I don't know what.
The MS is first and foremost. And I don't even have a bad case of MS. I have difficulty walking. Have incredible pain once every 4-6 weeks that just doesn't resolve with anything I do. I have little or no energy. But that's it. No wheelchair. I'm still working. I feel guilty even obsessing about it because I know many of you have it so much worse.
But when I get into these bad periods I find it so hard to work. It hurts to type - look at me I'll write this post and complain later! It hurts to walk. I make so many mistakes and people are always being so f-ing agreeable, which somehow makes me feel worse. I was a good employee. Now my focus is bad.
I'm on a gazillion meds for all of it. I'm a walking pharmacy.
Financially my husband and I are in ruins. I know we - as is everybody - are one step away from being jobless. One step away from being evicted for not paying the rent (this Friday). His car broke down for the 2nd time in 2 weeks. Robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Oh, my gosh, I could go on and on. And the only thing that keeps running through my head is that I thought I was a good person, and can't understand what I've done. I feel like Karma has come back to bite me for somebody I wronged. For not going to church. For thinking mean thoughts. And here I am at work, and I can't stop crying. Anybody out there understand where I'm coming from? I feel so guilty for something I must have done, but I don't know what.
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Usually I get a daily influx of emails on health topics. An article from Dr. Mercola really stood out recently though because it mentioned that fat cells have their own mitochondria. Not only was this the first I'd heard of this, he also mentioned that fat serves a purpose in our metabolism. Another new factoid for me. The bottom line for me was to appreciate that even our fat cells play a...
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I just do not feel well and I really think that it's because I cried yesterday on my way to work about my Aunt who is in the hospital. I don't think that we will have her much longer. She is very frail. Now she needs help eating. So, this is the third time in a year that I felt this way after crying. I think crying releases toxins into my body. I also worked up a sweat at the gym...
Love
Sandra
To do lists help me a lot even if it seems a simple idea. It's a nice boost to accomplish even the smallest things. One positive thing seems to beget another.
I'm glad you vented and I hope you'll be feeling better.
Hugs,
~Lorrie
Try to rest more and let others help you.
I wish you well and may this flare up end soon.
Best regard,s Jani
I thought that I was having a horrible day and then I read yours. I am not in financial ruin or anything like that. Just medical weird troubles by mean clinic people. I am an advocate and I make it hard on people and the big people throw it back at me. The thing is I have MS and another medical issue. And I keep having hit after hit. So it is hard.
I am worry that you are a walking pharmacy. Maybe that is part of the problem. I talked to my pharmacist and went over my meds. I was able to drop a couple of them and now I take the minimum. I tried to get off LDN and I think that I was going through withdrawal. I will try to again and see if that was for real.
Anyway, thanks for venting, we can all identify in some way with your story.
If you wait long enough, things will get better, things will get worse, things will get better. I learned that from my mom. She lived to be 85 and so she did know something. Things get better and then you die from a hospital bug that it incurable. At least that was her lesson if life. :(
Oh well, it will probably get better. Hugs to you!!
(If you can't read into my sarcasm, nothing I could have said would have possibly helped...why not go the subliminal route?) 8^)
As far as the meds go: "Normal", healthy people get addicted to drugs. Sick people only get addicted to feeling somewhat normal....
This is from Tony Snow, after his cancer returned and before he died. It is kind of long and I hesitate to post due to the length. I'll re-read it every couple of months.
Lengthy but worth the read.
TONY SNOW'S TESTIMONY
This is an outstanding testimony from Tony Snow,
President Bush's Press Secretary, and his fight with cancer.
Commentator and broadaster Tony Snow
announced that he had colon cancer in 2005.
Following surgery and chemo-thrapy,
Snow joined the Bush Administration in April, 2006, as press secretary.
Unfortunately, on March 23, 2007,
Snow, 51, a husband and father of three,
announced that the cancer had recurred, with tumors found in his abdomen,
leading to surgery in April, followed by more chemotherapy.
Snow went back to work in the White House Briefing Room on May 3,
but has resigned since, 'for economic reasons,'
and to pursue 'other interests.'
It needs little intro .. . . it speaks for itself.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
'Blessings arrive in unexpected packages,
- in my case, cancer.
Those of us with potentially fatal diseases
- and there are millions in America today -
find ourselves in the odd position of coping with our mortality
while trying to fathom God's will.
Although it would be the height of presumption
to declare with confidence 'What It All Means,'
Scripture provides powerful hints and consolations.
The first is that we shouldn't spend too much time
trying to answer the 'why' questions:
Why me?
Why must people suffer?
Why can't someone else get sick?
We can't answer such things,
and the questions themselves
often are designed more to express our anguish
than to solicit an answer.
I don't know why I have cancer, and I don't much care.
It is what it is, a plain and indisputable fact.
Yet even while staring into a mirror darkly,
great and stunning truths began to take shape.
Our maladies define a central feature of our existence:
We are fallen.
We are imperfect.
Our bodies give out.
But, despite this, - or because of it, -
God offers the possibility of salvation and grace.
We don't know how the narrative of our lives will end,
but we get to choose how to use the interval
between now
and the moment we meet our Creator face-to-face.
Second, we need to get past the anxiety.
The mere thought of dying
can send adrenaline flooding through your system.
A dizzy, unfocused panic seizes you.
Your heart thumps; your head swims.
You think of nothingness and swoon.
You fear partings;
you worry about the impact on family and friends.
You fidget and get nowhere.
To regain footing, remember that we were born not into death,
but into life - and that the journey continues
after we have finished our days on this earth.
We accept this on faith,
but that faith is nourished by a conviction
that stirs even within many non-believing hearts
- an institution that the gift of life, once given,
cannot be taken away.
Those who have been stricken
enjoy the special privilege of being able to fight
with their might, main, and faith
to live fully, richly, exuberantly
- no matter how their days may be numbered.
Third, we can open our eyes and hearts.
God relishes surprise.
We want lives of simple, predictable ease,
- smooth, even trails as far as the eye can see, -
but God likes to go off-road.
He provokes us with twists and turns.
He places us in predicaments
that seem to defy our endurance and comprehension
- and yet don't.
By His love and grace, we persevere.
The challenges that make our hearts leap
and stomachs churn
invariably strengthen our faith
and grant measures of wisdom and joy
we would not experience otherwise.
'You Have Been Called'.
Picture yourself in a hospital bed.
The fog of anesthesia has begun to wear away.
A doctor stands at your feet,
a loved one holds your hand at the side.
'It's cancer,' the healer announces.
The natural reaction is to turn to God
and ask him to serve as a cosmic Santa.
'Dear God, make it all go away.
Make everything simpler.'
But another voice whispers: 'You have been called.'
Your quandary has drawn you closer to God,
closer to those you love,
closer to the issues that matter,
- and has dragged into insignificance
the banal concerns
that occupy our 'normal time.'
There's another kind of response,
although usually short-lived,
an inexplicable shudder of excitement
as if a clarifying moment of calamity
has swept away everything trivial and tiny,
and placed before us
the challenge of important questions.
The moment you enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death,
things change.
You discover that Christianity
is not something doughy, passive, pious, and soft.
Faith may be the substance of things hoped for,
the evidence of things not seen.
But it also draws you into a world shorn of fearful caution.
The life of belief teems with thrills, boldness, danger, shocks,
reversals, triumphs, and epiphanies.
Think of Paul, traipsing through the known world
and comtemplating trips
to what must have seemed the antipodes (Spain),
shaking the dust from his sandals,
worrying not about the morrow,
but only about the moment.
There's nothing wilder than a life of humble virtue,
- for it is through selflessness and service
that God wrings from our bodies and spirits
the most we ever could give,
the most we ever could offer,
and the most we ever could do.
Finally, we can let love change everything.
When Jesus was faced with the prospect of cruicifixion,
he grieved not for himself,
but for us.
He cried for Jerusalem before entering the Holy City.
From the Cross, he took on the cumulative burden of human sin and weakness,
and begged for forgiveness on our behalf.
We get repeated chances
to learn that life is not about us,
that we acquired purpose and satisfaction
by sharing in God's love for others.
Sickness gets us part way there.
It reminds us of our limitations and dependence.
But it also gives us a chance to serve the healthy.
A minister friend of mine observes
that people suffering grave afflictions
often acquire the faith of two people,
while loved ones accept the burden
of two peoples' worries and fears.
'Learning How to Live'.
Most of us have watched friends as they drifted toward God's arms,
not with resignation, but with peace and hope.
In so doing, they have taught us not how to die,
but how to live.
They have emulated Christ
by transmitting the power and authority of live.
I sat by my best friend's bedside a few years ago
as a wasting cancer took him away.
He kept at his table a worn Bible
and a 1928 edition of the Book of Common Prayer.
A shattering grief disabled his family,
many of his old friends, and at least one priest.
Here was an humble and very good guy,
someone who apologized when he winced with pain
because he thought it made his guest uncomfortable.
He restrained his equanimity and good humor
literally until his last conscious moment.
'I'm going to try to beat [this cancer],'
he told me several months before he died.
'But if I don't, I'll see you on the other side.'
His gift was to remind everyone around him
that even though God doesn't promise us tomorrow,
he does promise us eternity
- filled with life and love we cannot comprehend, -
and that one can, in the throes of sickness,
point the rest of us toward timeless truths
that will help us weather future storms.
Through such trials, God bids us to choose:
Do we believe, or do we not?
Will we be bold enough to love,
daring enough to serve,
humble enough to submit,
and strong enough
to acknowledge our limitations?
Can we surrender our concern
in things that don't matter
so that we might devote our remaining days
to things that do?
When our faith flags, He throws reminmders in our way.
Think of the prayer warriors in our midst.
They change things,
and those of us
who have been on the receiving end
of their petitions and intercessions
know it.
It is hard to describe,
but there are times
when suddenly the hairs on the back of your neck stand up,
and you feel a surge of the Spirit.
Somehow you just know:
Others have chosen,
when talking to the Author of all creation,
to lift us up,
- to speak of us!
This is love of a very special order.
But so is the ability to sit back
and appreciate the wonder of every created thing.
The mere thought of death somehow makes every blessing vivid,
every happiness more luminious and intense.
We may not know how our contest with sickness will end,
but we have felt the ineluctable touch of God.
What is man that Thou are mindful of him?
We don't know much, but we know this:
No matter where we are,
no matter what we do,
no matter how bleak or frightening our prospects,
each and every one of us who believe each and every day,
lies in the same safe and impregnable place,
in the hollow of God's hand.'
T. Snow
Thanks to everybody for your responses. I know this is all temporary, no matter how you look at it. It's just hard being in the middle of it sometimes. I am thankful for the things I do have, and especially for the friends I have here. Nobody else could get it like you all do.
Kristi